For the record: This NaNoWriMo thing is a roller coaster. After a little cross-eyed slump from week two, I found my mojo and rustled up some fresh ideas on how to ramp up the tension as I head into the middle of the The Book. I had to get real with myself about how my characters would behave. Not how I would love to see them portrayed on screen, but in real life. Or in fiction life, rather. I had to get out of my thinking rut in order to push forward with all this breakneck drafting.

It’s all because of Atonement. I have drank from the well of Ian McEwan and I fear I’ll never be quite the same again. In fact, I know I won’t be the same. I have not thought about a book as much as I have thought about this book. Ever. I haven’t so much as touched another book since I finished it and it has been over two weeks. I am grieving the loss of the characters and not getting to hang out with them. It’s worse than a blaring headache, because a headache can be handled with a few Advil. It’s the writing that won’t let me go. How can we stay in the heads of these characters the whole time without it feeling like the Whinerton’s Family Reunion?

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Words To Live By

"I’m not the first person who feels that it’s the writer’s true occupation to travel. In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.” —James Salter, 1925–2015